And Their Voices Prevailed

A Homily for Palm Sunday 2025

In the midst of the shouting match that ensues between Pilate and the Crowd, in Luke’s account of the Passion, Pilate, driven by fear and political expediency, seeks to release Jesus. The Crowd, engorged with rage and convinced that the destruction of this one human being and all he represents to them will restore peace and security, cry out for his crucifixion. And as the scene reaches its denouement, the Evangelist closes with a rather chilling phrase, in reference to the violent crowd, he writes: “And their voices prevailed.”

As we enter this Holy Week, I want to invite us to give some reflection to the following questions: Whose voices prevail in my life? What moves my heart: fear, expediency or rage? What shapes the words that influence me and the words that proceed from my mouth?

Because the Word became Flesh, words matter and how words are enfleshed in and through us matters. In a world rife with the cacophony of Crowd noise, what or who is shaping my words and how am I enfleshing those words?

As Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem amid the cries of the crowd who believe him to be the Messiah, the Pharisees caution him: “Teacher, rebuke your disciples.” And Jesus powerfully responds: “I tell you, if they keep silent, the stones will cry out!” Jesus knows the depth of the truth to which the crowd is attesting. He also knows just how fickle and frail their words can be.

What if our words were always first and foremost shaped out of silence rather than combat, competition, or contagion? What if we chose to be so silent amid the cacophony of the world’s noise that we could hear what the stones are crying out?

Other people’s words do not teach us how to speak, but rather, too often, they teach us how to misspeak. Fear, rage, political expediency, the domination of the crowd, all of this does not teach us how to enflesh the words that heal and bring hope. Only Silence can shape the words we have been created to speak.

Isaiah writes: “The Lord God has given me a well-trained tongue, that I might know how to speak to the weary a word that will rouse them. Morning after morning HE opens my ear that I may hear…” Perhaps it is time we all step into the silence and let God give us a well-trained tongue. Let God once again be the One who opens our ears that we might hear and our mouths that we might speak, not a word that lends to the general noise but a word that breaks through because it brings life.

How might we receive this “well-trained tongue?” I believe St. Paul shows us the way. We must be willing to follow the Trajectory of God in Christ, who “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather he emptied himself… and was found human!”

Are we willing to go into that silence, to descend into that emptiness and be found human; be found humane? Are we willing to enflesh words born of vulnerability and humility, even if the crowd or the powerful make us out to be fools?

What shapes the words that proceed from our mouths? Is it fear? Is it rage? Is it expediency? Is it indifference? Is it blame? Is it shame? Are we willing, in the midst of so much noise in our world, to enter the silence, to descend into the kind of emptiness we need so we might be once again “found human” and taught to speak with humility, enfleshing words that heal, words that save, words that speak life… even if no one seems to want to hear them?

As we enter this Holy Week let us find the space for ourselves to be so silent that we can hear what the stones are crying out so we can be once again taught to speak a Word of Life!

In the daily shouting matches that ensue and entangle us: Whose voice is prevailing?